"...unlikely that the Arctic will experience ice-free summers by 2020."

But they do say that "first ice-free summer expected to occur between 2060 and 2080?. By then there will be nobody that remembers this forecast. Yet on the same day, bumbling Arctic explorer Pen Hadow says in a UK Telegraph interview: "To all intents and purposes the Arctic will be ice free in a decade. I do find the implications of this happening in my lifetime quite shocking.".

Gosh, who to believe? Somebody that fakes biotelemetry data or somebody that won't hand over climate data for replication studies? From a Met Office press release on October 15th:

The extent of Arctic sea ice has been decreasing since the late 1970s. In 2007 it decreased dramatically in a single year, reaching an all-time low. At the time it was widely reported that this was caused by man-made climate change and that the rate of decline of summer sea ice was increasing.

Modelling of Arctic sea ice by the Met Office Hadley Centre climate model shows that ice invariably recovers from extreme events, and that the long-term trend of reduction is robust - with the first ice-free summer expected to occur between 2060 and 2080. It is unlikely that the Arctic will experience ice-free summers by 2020.

Analysis of the 2007 summer sea-ice minimum has subsequently shown that this was due, in part, to unusual weather patterns. Arctic weather systems are highly variable year-on-year and the prevailing winds can enhance, or oppose, the southward flow of ice into the Atlantic. Consequently, the sea ice has not declined every year, but has shown considerable variability - both in extent and thickness.

The high variability has made it difficult to attribute the observed trend to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, although there is now enough data to detect a human signal in the 30-year trend. The trend and observed variability, including the minimum extent observed in 2007, is consistent with climate modelling from the Met Office.

About half of the climate models involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment report, show that ice declines in steps - failing to recover from extreme years. The observed temporary recovery from the 2007 minimum in 2008 and 2009 indicates that the Arctic ice has not yet reached a tipping point, if such exists. We expect Arctic ice to continue to decline in line with increasing global temperatures. If the rate of global temperature rise increases then so will the rate of Arctic sea-ice decline.

All the studies show that Hispanic illegals and their offspring have markedly lower average IQ scores than the white average. My orientation in psychometric research has however always been great caution about the validity of any tests used and I initially felt that the remarkable success of ancient Central Americans in building rather advanced civilization despite being cut off from the major source of human progress (the Eurasian continent) implied a higher IQ for their descendants than the tests showed.

That is however a fairly arguable proposition and the findings reported below have changed my mind. I think that the findings below confirm what the IQ tests say. The results below show what I very "incorrectly" call the "chimpanzee effect". A month old chimpanzee is much smarter and more capable than a human infant of the same age but the human does of course far surpass the chimp eventually. In other words, low IQ is less evident in the early years and most evident in adulthood. We find a similar effect in blacks. Average black IQ is closer to average white IQ in childhood than in adulthood. Beyond the early teens, black IQ stops rising but white IQ does not. White IQ peaks at about age 16.

And what is reported below is precisely another example of the chimpanzee effect: Intellectual achievement gap smallest in early childhood but rapidly increasing with age. I must stress that I am NOT saying that either blacks or Hispanics are similar to chimpanzees. ALL human beings of any race are much smarter than chimps. I am just using chimps as a vivid demonstration of what seems a general truth: That real gaps in intellectual ability become evident later rather than sooner -- and the Hispanic developmental pattern is exactly what we expect of an average IQ that is indeed lower

A forthcoming study on Hispanic children’s cognitive skills underlines the challenges the country faces in aspiring to close the achievement gap between these children and their white and Asian counterparts. Hispanic “children fall behind their peers in mental development by the time they reach grade school, and the gap tends to widen as they get older,” reports the New York Times. “The drop-off in the cognitive scores of Hispanic toddlers, especially those from Mexican backgrounds, was steeper than for other [low-income] groups and could not be explained by economic status alone. . . . From 24 to 36 months, the Hispanic children fell about six months behind their white peers on measures like word comprehension, more complex speech and working with their mothers on simple tasks.”

This new study, from the University of California–Berkeley, may be unusually blunt in its assessment of Hispanic cognitive development, but it is hardly unprecedented. A 2004 study by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office found a similar decline in Hispanic students’ ability to keep up with their peers in learning English. Children from Mandarin- and Spanish-speaking households begin kindergarten with similar levels of English proficiency, but their paths quickly diverge. The Mandarin-speaking students make continuing progress in mastering English, while the Hispanic students’ advance stalls out in the second and third grades as the demands of California’s English-proficiency test grow more difficult. Mandarin kindergartners establish oral skills in English in one year, the legislative analyst found, and by the beginning of second grade, they have begun developing a mastery of reading and writing, unlike Hispanics. The widening English-proficiency gap between Asian and Hispanic students may reflect parental willingness to expose children to English at home, but the gap occurs in math as well.

This summer in Southern California, I observed Hispanic students who had been taught in English throughout their school careers, yet who possessed very weak formal language ability. An in-class reading assignment at Locke High School in Watts asked students to answer the question: “Why is it important to use all your skills during your teen years?” A ninth-grader wrote in response: “To make it better.” Another question, “What sudden insight came to the engineer?” elicited the answer: “How to put the little mirrors.” While diagnosing the student-written sentence, “The pigs squealed loudly because the’re [sic] bored at the barn,” a high-school English teacher in Santa Ana asked his class: “Why does the dependent clause need to be in the past tense?” A student answered: “Because you’re talking about a lot of people.”

The Berkeley researchers speculate that the early decline in Hispanic students’ language and reasoning skills may reflect inadequate maternal stimulation in the home. And indeed, a Santa Ana elementary-school principal recounted to me her largely unsuccessful efforts to get parents to teach their children such basic kindergarten-survival tools as cutting with scissors and the words for colors. “Kids come in not knowing the alphabet in Spanish or the sounds of Spanish,” she said. “They use three-word sentences; they come in without oral-language ability.”

The Berkeley study will inevitably be used to buttress the Obama administration’s plans to pour billions of federal taxpayer dollars into early-education programs. As a matter of education policy, such efforts represent wishful thinking. Head Start has been repeatedly shown to have no lasting effect on students’ academic performance. Even the most successful and lavishly-funded of such early-intervention programs — the iconic Perry Preschool Project from the early 1960s in Ypsilanti, Mich. — explained only 3 percent of the earnings of its participants at age 40, and about 4 percent of their educational-attainment levels, wrote John J. Miller in NR in 2007. Replicating the Perry Project’s services on a national scale for Hispanic children would be extraordinarily expensive and produce only modest results. Many children who receive early intervention provide inferior intellectual stimulation for their own children, whether for innate cognitive or for cultural reasons.

But the more interesting implications of the study and others like it are for immigration policy. Our de facto immigration policy is currently weighted to a population that appears to require massive additional government education spending — even before formal schooling begins — to be made academically competitive. This choice would not seem to be economically rational, at least so long as we aspire to universal college-going. If the country remains committed to sending a far greater number of students to college, as even many conservatives continue to be, we better get ourselves a different mix of immigrants if we don’t want to bankrupt our education budgets. Alternatively, if the open-borders lobby prevails and Latin American migration continues to dominate our immigration flows, it’s time to acknowledge that many students never will be college material, nor do they need to be to lead productive, fulfilling lives.

News.com.au - ANOTHER boatload of asylum seekers has been intercepted off the northern Australian coast. The vessel is the 37th intercepted by Australian authorities this year. ......The group will be transferred to Christmas Island for security, identity and health checks.

And let me guess, the sniveling weasel masquerading as the Prime Minister of this country will, 'refuse to apologize for his tough, tough, tough, tough, tough [have I said it enough times?] immigration and detention policies'. Since he watered down the previous governments immigration policy after lying that he wouldn't, the boats have not stopped coming. To maintain that his policy is 'tough' is indication that the fellow is either insane & stupid or he's a lying weasel.

The latest arrivals come as the federal government grapples with a solution to the crisis involving 78 Tamil asylum seekers who refuse to leave the Australian Customs vessel Oceanic Viking and enter a detention centre in Indonesia. The asylum seekers were rescued almost two weeks ago by an Australian navy vessel in Indonesia's search and rescue zone, before being transferred to the Oceanic Viking, which remains anchored 10 nautical miles off Bintan Island.

What I couldn't understand is why are we rescuing boats in Indonesian waters, if that's the go now, why don't we send the Navy to go sail around in circles off the coast of China and wait to rescue someone. And what effing crisis are they prattling on about, if you or I boarded a navy ship and refused to get off, they'd drag us off the thing and kick our asses on to shore. What's worse these scumbags were about to sink when our navy rescued them, and this is the way they repay us! There is no crisis, there's just a lack of balls on the part of the aforementioned lying weasel.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Thurs today said the Australian and Indonesian governments had great patience in dealing with the 78 Tamils, who are refusing to leave the vessel in Indonesia. Mr Rudd has not ruled out using cash payments to entice them to disembark.

Yeah, you guessed right, the weasel will be forking over our money! This is Australia's immigration policy now folks, applying, waiting for approval and doing the right thing, bah! That's for dumb schmucks and retards, the back door's the way to go. It's hard to believe, but this clown show called immigration has now become a joke. For fucksakes, why bother with a damn navy anymore krudd, just sell the navy ships to Somali pirates or something, sack all the border security personnel, who the heck needs passports and all that useless shit anymore; it's one-world, open-borders kumbaya now baby!

Use the money saved from all that to buy some cruise-liners and charter planes. Then send them around the world to pick everyone up, all board, free go folks, terrorists, drug-pushers, pedophiles, war-criminals, jihadists, all welcome, suckers down under. Bring them on over krudd, put em' up at the effing hilton mate, no worries, who cares about the money, it all grows on trees anyway, there's the sauce bottle you keep prattling on about kev, have another suck, bastard.

I hope we aussies are waking up to all this, I know John Howard wasn't the perfect PM and we weren't happy with all the jobs, tax-cuts and paying off the national debt under his government, but this fellow is taking us to 'joke nation of the world' status, fast.

They try to glide over it below but Greenies normally identify the postwar years (1945+) as the time of a big rise in CO2. But the big jump in sea level reported below was at a time (1879 to 1915) when the industrial era was in its infancy! Correlation does not prove causation but lack of correlation certainly DISPROVES causation

An international team of environmental scientists led by the University of Pennsylvania has shown that sea-level rise, at least in North Carolina, is accelerating. Researchers found 20th-century sea-level rise to be three times higher than the rate of sea-level rise during the last 500 years. In addition, this jump appears to occur between 1879 and 1915, a time of industrial change that may provide a direct link to human-induced climate change.

The results appear in the current issue of the journal Geology.

The rate of relative sea-level rise, or RSLR, during the 20th century was 3 to 3.3 millimeters per year, higher than the usual rate of one per year. Furthermore, the acceleration appears consistent with other studies from the Atlantic coast, though the magnitude of the acceleration in North Carolina is larger than at sites farther north along the U.S. and Canadian Atlantic coast and may be indicative of a latitudinal trend related to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

Understanding the timing and magnitude of this possible acceleration in the rate of RSLR is critical for testing models of global climate change and for providing a context for 21st-century predictions.

"Tide gauge records are largely inadequate for accurately recognizing the onset of any acceleration of relative sea-level rise occurring before the 18th century, mainly because too few records exist as a comparison," Andrew Kemp, the paper's lead author, said. "Accurate estimates of sea-level rise in the pre-satellite era are needed to provide an appropriate context for 21st-century projections and to validate geophysical and climate models."

The research team studied two North Carolina salt marshes that form continuous accumulations of organic sediment, a natural archive that provides scientists with an accurate way to reconstruct relative sea levels using radiometric isotopes and stratigraphic age markers. The research provided a record of relative sea-level change since the year 1500 at the Sand Point and Tump Point salt marshes in the Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system of North Carolina. The two marshes provided an ideal setting for producing high-resolution records because thick sequences of high marsh sediment are present and the estuarine system is microtidal, which reduces the vertical uncertainty of aleosea-level estimates. The study provides for the first time replicated sea-level reconstructions from two nearby sites.

In addition, comparison with 20th-century tide-gauge records validates the use of this approach and suggests that salt-marsh records with decadal and decimeter resolution can supplement tide-gauge records by extending record length and compensating for the strong spatial bias in the global distribution of longer instrumental records.

I'm not a big fan of Halloween, but I have some advice for those of you who expect to allow your children to take part in the ritual of trick-or-treating: Use the five guidelines listed below and allow the 2009 version of the costume- and candy-intensive holiday to serve as a teachable moment about socialism and about "spreading the wealth around" in the manner touted so often by President Barack Obama:

1. Tell your child he cannot eat any of the candy he collects and will, instead, have to take all of it to the ACORN office nearest your home (wipe tears);

2. Tell your child he will have to turn over their bags full of candy to the government-authorized agents who, in addition to collecting the candy, will need to record his name, Social Security number and contact information for future use (wipe tears);

3. Tell your child he will have to wait 12 weeks for ACORN officials to count all of the candy he collected and repackage it for equal-share redistribution among all children in their community (wipe tears);

4. Tell your child that, within 12 weeks, he should expect to be provided instructions for picking up a his fair and equal share of the treats he collected after ACORN officials finish counting all of the collected candies (wipe tears); and

5. Tell your child that the scenario above offers them a glimpse of what the future in the United States will look like if socialism is allowed to flourish (wipe tears for last time) and that he can keep his children from having to experience such pain by voting for - and by encouraging others to vote for - conservatives whose values line up with those of this country's founders and the framers of the U.S. Constitution.

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent? Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers-- that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish? Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?

Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?

Does any of this sound like America? How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.

How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries. We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American.

How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.

Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America," the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country. Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.

Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.

Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House? Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government-- people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world.

Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration's enemies list.

Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year-- each bill more than a thousand pages long-- too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question-- and the biggest question for this generation.

FOX News - Federal authorities on Wednesday arrested several members of a radical Sunni Islam group in the U.S., killing one of its leaders at a shootout in a Michigan warehouse, the U.S. attorney's office said. Agents were trying to arrest Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, at a Dearborn warehouse on charges that included conspiracy to sell stolen goods and illegal possession and sale of firearms. Authorities also conducted raids elsewhere to try to round up 10 followers named in a federal complaint.

Abdullah refused to surrender, fired a weapon and was killed by gunfire from agents, FBI spokeswoman Sandra Berchtold said. In the 43-paged complaint unsealed Wednesday, the FBI said Abdullah, also known as Christopher Thomas, was an imam, or prayer leader, of a radical group named Ummah whose primary mission is to establish an Islamic state within the United States. No one was charged with terrorism. But Abdullah was "advocating and encouraging his followers to commit violent acts against the United States," FBI agent Gary Leone said in an affidavit.

Thanks to the FBI, there is one less islamist piece of crap that the American taxpayer is going to have to waste money prosecuting, providing halal meals and all that crap for. Well done to the FBI, thank you once again for doing all of us a favor. I hope the apologists for the religion of death and hatred are reading the above, read it morons, his primary mission is to establish an Islamic state within the United States. What do you think he wanted to do once he got this Islamic state, everyone would have to submit to sharia and then they'd start angling to take over the rest of the country.

That is the nature of islam, always has been, always will be; take over, subjugate through violence and murder and spread to the next region/culture/country/people. It's time for the western world to wake up and do what is the easiest and least nasty. Round up the extremists and start deportation, back to the middle east or any third-world backwater that'll take em'. Anyone else start weaseling around, send em' back too. No excuses, no waffling around, please, for all our sakes.

If we don't do this, history has shown us, muslims will keep murdering and carrying out their violent acts upon us until one day the westerner does what he has been the best at for more than a thousand years. He will have to start slaughtering and annihilating his enemy until there is no enemy left. There are a lot of things he is good at, which explains why his culture is superior, and one of them is killing. Be warned, he is terrifyingly good at it.

Recently, San Francisco has taken its status as the preeminent sanctuary city to a new low. A few weeks ago, the city's Board of Supervisors voted to stop the current practice of turning over illegal alien minors to ICE when arrested. Under the newly enacted policy, illegal alien minors will only be subject to deportation after being convicted of a felony. Even San Francisco’s own Mayor Newsom is opposed to the policy change, stating "the new law now makes it easier for illegal immigrants to commit crimes."

But wait, there’s even more!

Not only won't the San Francisco Police turn over illegal aliens they arrest, they won’t ticket or impound the vehicle of an illegal alien driving without a license or insurance either. Under yet another new illegal alien friendly policy, instead of impounding the vehicles of unlicensed and uninsured drivers, the city will release the car to another licensed driver and send the illegal alien on their way. Effectively, the official San Francisco police policy is that there is absolutely no negative consequence to driving without a license or insurance. This is not only bad immigration policy, but a major public safety concern.

The above is part of a press release dated October 27 from Federation for American Immigration Reform, 25 Massachusetts Avenue - Suite 330 Washington DC, 20001, Office 202-328-7004 www.fairus.org. Contact Dustin Carnevale on 202-328-7004 for details of the above. Email: media@fairus.org. Founded in 1979, FAIR is the oldest and largest immigration reform group in America. FAIR fights for immigration policies that enhance national security, improve the economy, protect jobs and wages and establish a rule of law that is recognized and enforced.

Being a crank makes you a "public intellectual" apparently. Comment by Andrew Bolt below

THIS sure is a strange way for Professor Clive Hamilton to spend the few years that he - and we - have left. I mean, if you thought the end of the world was nigh, would you really waste your last moments trying to become the next member for Higgins?

Still, who knows what now goes on in the grim skull of the Greens candidate for the Melbourne seat just vacated by former treasurer Peter Costello. And who understands what dark currents swirl in the brains of the thousands who will vote for him on December 5, in a poll that will measure how mad these times now are.

Hamilton has a CV that might make an innocent reader, impressed by titles, think: "Wow! This man must be smart." He describes himself as a "public intellectual". He's written books and is professor of public ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. The Rudd Government made him a Member of the Order of Australia. Yet that CV measures not Hamilton's greatness, but this country's idiocy.

His message is just one preached by religious cranks for centuries: "Repent, for the end of the world is nigh!" Here's his new version of this faith: "I think where we're going is to begin to see a Gaian earth in its ecological, cybernetic way, infused with some notion of mind or soul or chi, which will transform our attitudes to it away from an instrumentalist one, towards an attitude of greater reverence." And if we don't repent? "Unless we do that, I mean we seriously are in trouble, because we know that Gaia is revolting against the impact of human beings on it."

In fact, Hamilton fears we're doomed already by Gaia's revolt against wicked us and our greenhouse gases: "It now seems almost certain that, if it has not occurred already, within the next several years enough warming will be locked into the system ... (and) humans will be powerless to stop the shift to a new climate on Earth, one much less sympathetic to life."

So sure is Hamilton of this danger that voters may get just one chance to vote him in - and none to throw him out if the world's temperatures start rising again: "The implications of (a rise of) 3C, let alone 4C or 5C, are so horrible that we look to any possible scenario to head it off, including the canvassing of emergency responses such as the suspension of democratic processes."

Even our freedom to shop offends this embryonic dictator: "Shopping has become both an expression of the meaninglessness of consumer society and an attempted cure for it." But good news: "It has recently been shown that compulsive shopping disorder can be effectively treated with certain anti-depressant drugs ... "

Can't wait to see Hamilton lash the ladies of Higgins out of their fine shops in Chapel St and Toorak Rd. Still, be fair. He actually wants all of us to be poorer, and not just the rich: "We can only avoid catastrophe - including millions dying in the Third World - if we radically change the way we in the rich countries go about our daily lives. Above all, we must abandon our comfortable belief in progress."

Here's how: "Australia, along with the rest of the world, must cut its emissions by at least 60 per cent ... " But how to get people to agree with a target so ruinous? Hamilton's answer: "Personally I cannot see any alternative to ramping up the fear factor." Actually, Clive, consider that fear factor ramped. If you're now the kind of thinker voters prefer, even I will agree we're doomed.

It's past time for an accounting of Pharaoh barack's so-called "czars" - unelected, unvetted, unaccountable, and acting in patently unAmerican ways - because it's obvious (to those who look) that the proliferation of these bureaucratic vermin is undermining every facet of the U.S. society and government.

Just what IS a "czar"?They date back to the FDR administration - created in response to the astonishingly bungled "crisis" of the Great Depression - and were originally called by a far more accurate term: DICTATORS.Some of the current crop have to go through a "confirmation" process in the Senate - which, technically, makes them something other than actual "czars", but the principle and the end result is the same - but the majority (more than 30, so far, with this Administration) are simply appointed by the President, given control of Cabinet-level organizations (departments), given BILLION-DOLLAR budgets (that we don't have) to spend virtually however they want, then turned loose to frag-up this nation with fiat powers called "Federal policy and regulations"....essentially, they take over, punish, abuse, over-regulate whatever Pharaoh aims them at.

Given legal cover by the White House (and likely by the similarly appointed Attorney General), and aided and abetted by the useful fools in Congress - most of whom aren't even smart enough to realize that they're plaiting their own political nooses - these creatures were obviously given the mission to completely trash this nation by micromanaging away any shred of liberty or freedom.They're back-dooring the Constitution and doing their level best to make it irrelevant.

Oddly enough, there's Senators like collins, byrd and feingold whose ears pricked up about this proliferation of parasites - likely because they don't want someone else's snout stealing the slops from what they consider to be THEIR trough - and they're FINALLY starting to ask some questions that should have first been asked 70 years ago.

And did I mention that nearly all of these varmints are "progressives" and socialists?There's also Maoists, self-described communists, climate-kooks, anti-capitalists of every stripe, tax-cheats, fools who admire punks like hugo chavez, world-government proponents, international law advocates...all of 'em appointed by a narcissistic Suit that's so empty that when his teleprompter crashes you can hear the wind whistling up through the collar.Fascistic "czars"....look up the definition.It's frighteningly accurate.Is there anyone who's not drunk on "progressive punch" that can even pretendthat having all these vermin over-regulating everything in sight this is a good thing?It is going to take a VERY long time to even get a START on cleaning up the mess they're making of the Republic my kids will inherit.America, when you elected the "hopey-changey" Pharaoh and all his "progressive" Congressional jackasses to power last November, I have to ask:What the fuck were you thinking?

THREE men repeatedly gang raped a teenager during a horrific nine-hour ordeal but a judge yesterday ruled the trio were not "depraved monsters". The men, Zambian nationals Tyrone Chishimba, Likumbo Makasa and Mumbi Peter Mulenga, were found guilty of aggravated sexual assault without consent after a 15-year-old was repeatedly raped at a unit in Hurstville in August 2006.

During the three-month trial, the court heard the intoxicated girl, who cannot be identified, passed out at the unit and later woke up to find one of the men having intercourse with her, while the other two watched.

During sentencing submissions yesterday, a judge said the trio were guilty of serious crimes but were not depraved monsters, before sentencing them to at least three years in jail. Attorney General John Hatzistergos last night ordered a copy of the transcript to be sent to him and will discuss the possibility of an appeal with the DPP.

There is a program being shown shortly on British TV about the connection between race and IQ. So Britain's most widely circulated "quality" newspaper has published an anticipatory article on the subject by a Professor of Genetics at a prestigious British university: University College, London. From the personal particulars he mentions, one gathers that he is also a long-time Leftist activist.

Quite unsurprisingly, he pooh-poohs the idea of any connection between race and IQ. But in the article he makes not one single reference to any scientific fact (despite over 100 years of academic research on the subject) and his only criticism of those who say that there is a connection between race and IQ seems to be that they are all elderly (which is not true and even if it were, so what?). Can academic standards get any lower than that? To read such schoolboyish amateurism from an eminent professor of genetics is about the clearest demonstration one could ask of the fact that the "all men are equal" crowd have lost the intellectual argument. All they have to fall back on is crude political polemics.

Insofar as one can detect any argument at all in his article, he seems to be saying that the unfailingly low standard of average black educational achievement is due to poor education -- quite ignoring the fact that American educators are at their wits' end in trying to find anything that will budge the black/white "gap" in attainment. If our twitchingly Leftist professor of genetics can find ANYTHING that will get blacks achieving at anywhere near white levels he will get a Nobel prize (not that that means much these days).

Our sad professor explains high Asian academic achievement by the "push" that they get from their families. And there is a similar article here which proclaims that low black educational attainment is due to "absent" black fathers. There is a small grain of truth in that. Parental pressure can indeed raise educational achievement to some degree. But since our unscientific professor's article consists mainly of anecdotes, perhaps I can offer a counter-anecdote. Let me in fact offer two anecdotes to show that parental pressure is only a minor factor in intellectual attainment:

My son had zero pressure on him during his schooling and I was an "absent father" throughout. His mother and I split up in the same year that he began school. But he was always a couple of years ahead of his class in reading age and now has a first class honours degree in Mathematics from a distinguished university and is well set for an academic career. How come? I am a high-achieving academic and he has academic genes. He didn't need pushing. He mainly just coasted but the work was easy for him so he still did well.

And I myself grew up in a working class family, which, like most such families, had no expectations of high achievements among its children, and I was in fact discouraged from continuing my education beyond junior school. But my parents were both great readers of books and both had siblings who did exceptionally well at school. So I obviously got good genes from them which enabled me also to cruise and still do well academically.

Explanations for low black achievement in terms of black family patterns do have one virtue: Black families are not going to change any time soon so if that is the problem, we have to conclude that the attainment "gap" is immovable. And it is immovable, though not for that reason.

The Age - An Australian Army dog has been killed in Afghanistan. Nova, the bomb detecting dog, died in a car crash that was part of a training operation.

A statement from the Department of Defence said medics tried to save Nova but she was put down by the regimental medical officer.

Heartbroken soldiers farewelled Nova as her coffin was loaded on board an RAAF cargo plane for the flight back to Australia. Commanding officer Peter Connolly said the loss of Nova had been keenly felt.

‘‘Explosive detection dogs are a critical asset in our fight against improvised explosive devices. The dogs save countless lives,’’ Lieutenant Colonel Connolly said in a statement.

Nova will be cremated.

May she be in a place filled with meaty bones, open spaces, friends, belly-rubs and balls flying around everywhere.

In Australia, prophecies of doom for coral reefs go back long before the global warming scam, but coral reefs just fluctuate as they always have. I like this bit "if and when the climate is stabilised". That shows how little science is involved, seeing that the climate has been stable since 1999.

I know it is awkward of me to mention it again but may I remind all and sundry that even Hoagy (Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg), Australia's no.1 coral doomster has noted now in a joint journal article the "astonishing regenerative capabilities of the dominant branching Acroporid corals".

Come to think of it, Hoagy has been very quiet since he co-published that article

Some Florida corals above

CORAL reefs are so damaged their only chance for survival may be to freeze some species and reintroduce them to the sea in the future. The BBC is reporting the proposal, which was presented to 16 major economies at a Copenhagen meeting organised by the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (Globe).

Scientists speaking at the conference said the instability of climate change and rising ocean temperatures mean damage to reefs around the world is almost irreversible, the BBC said. The proposal suggested freezing samples that could then be reintroduced to their native oceans if and when the climate is stabilised.

It also comes as the Federal and West Australian governments draw up proposals to have Ningaloo Reef listed as a World Heritage site. The application is expected to be ready by February, leaving it up to international authorities to decide whether or not the reef qualifies for the status.

Emily Twiggs, an applied geology researcher at Perth's Curtin University, said Ningaloo was already well known as one of the world's best coral reef "laboratories". Supported by WA's Marine Science Institution (WAMSI), Ms Twiggs and her Curtin University supervisor, Associate Professor Lindsay Collins, have spent several years studying reef core samples of the eastern Ningaloo Reef within the Exmouth Gulf.

The samples, which have given them a history of the reef's growth over several thousand years, are being used to discover how the reef has responded to environmental change, including sea-level fluctuations, coastal flooding and cyclone activity. The reef's isolation, pristine waters and untouched corals made it the ideal place to monitor the response of coral reefs to climate change, Ms Twiggs said. "Reefs in general and the Ningaloo in particular, provide an excellent barometer with which we can monitor a changing environment," she said. "Corals can be quite resilient to environmental change. When sea levels rise or fall, corals can often alter their growth patterns to respond.

"But when change is really rapid, [Would a thermonuclear blast be rapid enough? Despite being a nuclear test site, Bikini atoll still has an abundance of coral] or there are multiple factors, then there is the potential for entire reefs to die out. "Because it is largely untouched by human activity, the Ningaloo Reef is one of the better coral reefs to study the impact of climate change. "This is especially true when compared with examples like the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, which has been largely impacted by human activity."

Ms Twiggs said the greatest threats to coral reefs because of climate change were rapid increases in sea level, increased ocean acidity, a significant rise in sea surface temperature and more intense storm activity. "If current estimates on climate change are correct, all four of these factors are likely to occur together," she said. "This would likely place reefs such as the Ningaloo at risk."

A .33 difference is insignificant anyway. The Federal Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Second Edition says (p. 384): "the threshold for concluding that an agent was more likely than not the cause of an individual's disease is a relative risk greater than 2.0.".

That is exceedingly weird. The implication is that even in the unsprayed villages, 8% of the kids had defective plumbing. The findings are clearly not generalizable to anything in the Western world. The MAIN cause of the defects has obviously not been identified. When it is, we might be able to see if and how how it interacts with DDT. Maybe the villages that got more DDT also got more of the problem agent, whatever that might be.

Much farting at the mouth by a self-satisfied and self-righteous Prof. Bornman below. A Professor he/she may be but a scientist he/she is not. Academics customarily eschew personal publicity. Prof. Bornman obviously laps it up

Let me see if I can do a better job of scientific interpretation than Prof. Bornman -- using no more than general knowledge. Male genital deformities could be caused by a heavy load of estrogens but Western sources of estrogens are not likely to be found to any extent in African villages. So it must be phytoestrogens at work. But to get a heavy load of phytoestrogens the villagers must be very successful farmers. And wouldn't successful farmers be more likely to be ready, willing and able to take up modern aids to health -- such as DDT? So the "third factor" (the single underlying cause of both the deformities and the high DDT usage) is prosperity, African style. Whether that explanation is right or not, however, it exposes Prof. Bornman's brain-dead attachment to the logical fallacy that correlation is causation

Women who lived in villages sprayed with DDT to reduce malaria gave birth to 33 per cent more baby boys with urogenital birth defects (UGBD) between 2004 and 2006 than women in unsprayed villages, according to research published online by the UK-based urology journal BJUI. And women who stayed at home in sprayed villages, rather than being a student or working, had 41 per cent more baby boys with UGBDs, such as missing testicles or problems with their urethra or penis.

The authors suggest that this is because they spent more time in homes where domestic DDT-based sprays are still commonly used to kill the mosquitos that cause malaria, even in areas where organised mass spraying no longer takes place.

Researchers led by the University of Pretoria in South Africa studied 3,310 boys born to women from the Limpopo Province, where DDT spraying was carried out in high-risk areas between 1995 and 2003 to control malaria. The study compared boys born to women in the 109 villages that were sprayed, with those born to women from the 97 villages that were not. This showed that 357 of the boys included in the study – just under 11 per cent – had UGBDs. The incidence of UGBDs was significantly higher if the mother came from a sprayed village.

"If women are exposed to DDT, either through their diet or through the environment they live in, this can cause the chemical to build up in their body" explains lead author Professor Riana Bornman from the University's Department of Urology. "DDT can cross the placenta and be present in breast milk and studies have shown that the residual concentration in the baby's umbilical cord are very similar to those in maternal blood.

"It has been estimated that if DDT exposure were to cease completely, it would still take ten to 20 years for an individual who had been exposed to the chemical to be clear of it. Our study was carried out on boys born between 2004 and 2006, five to nine years after official records showed that their mothers had been exposed to spraying. "Records were not kept before 1995 in the Limpopo Province, but it is reasonable to assume that DDT was being used before that date to combat malaria.

"Although most countries have now banned the use of DDT, certain endemic malarial areas still use indoor residual spraying with DDT to decrease the incidence and spread of the disease, which is caused by mosquitoes."

The two-year study included 2,396 boys whose mothers had been exposed to DDT and 914 whose mothers had not. A number of other factors were taken into account to rule out possible causes of the birth defects. These included smoking and drinking, the mother's age, how long she had lived in her village and her race. These all proved statistically insignificant.

The authors believe that their study highlights the importance of educating people in high-risk malaria areas about the dangers of DDT. "The use of DDT has contributed to the success in reducing malarial transmission and malarial deaths in South and Southern Africa" says Professor Bornman. "However, the present findings also strongly suggest that indoor residual spraying with DDT is associated with UGBDs in newborn boys. "With global concerns about the effect of chemicals on health, and the possibility of malaria resurgence and spread as a result of climate change, all authorities should ensure that the general public, including those living under indoor residual spraying conditions, are aware of the possible health risks.

"Educating people living in the DDT-sprayed communities about ways of protecting themselves from undue DDT exposure needs to be carried out as a matter of extreme urgency. "There must be long-term monitoring of possible environmental and human health impacts, particularly in those areas where DDT will be introduced as part of the fight against malaria. "We are now carrying out further research to find out how indoor spraying using DDT-based products affects humans and how this risk can be reduced."

Times of India - Somalia’s hardline Islamist group al Shabaab has publicly whipped women for wearing bras they say violate Islam by constituting a deception, north Mogadishu residents said on Friday. The insurgent group, which seeks to impose a strict form of sharia Islamic law, amputated a foot and a hand each from two young men accused of robbery. They have also banned movies, musical ringtones, dancing at wedding ceremonies and playing or watching soccer.

Dawn - Balochistan Education Minister Shafique Ahmed Khan has been shot dead after a firing incident in Quetta. According to police, gumen opened indiscriminate fire on the education minister in front of his house on Toghi road killing him on the spot.

Dawn - Two powerful suicide car bombs blew up outside the Justice Ministry and city government offices in downtown Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 147 people in the worst attack in more than two years.

UPI - Islamic officials in a Somali town have executed two young men for allegedly spying for the government, local officials say. The Shabelle Media Network reported Sunday that residents of Merka in Somalia's Lower Shabelle region gathered in a football stadium to witness the executions, which reportedly was carried out by the town's Islamic forces.

Arutz Sheva - According to initial reports, a female terrorist stabbed a security person in the stomach Sunday afternoon at the Kalandia checkpoint in northern Jerusalem. He was taken to the hospital in moderate condition.

Compass Direct - Two Christians in Gojra, Pakistan who allegedly fired warning shots as an Islamist mob approached that burned seven Christians to death on Aug. 1 told Compass they were tortured after police arrested them.

Compass Direct - Another Christian imprisoned for his faith in Eritrea has died from authorities denying him medical treatment, according to a Christian support organization. Sources told Netherlands-based Open Doors that Yemane Kahasay Andom, 43, died Thursday (July 23) at Mitire Military Confinement Center. A member of the Kale-Hiwot church in Mendefera, Andom was said to be secretly buried in the camp.

Compass Direct - An Egyptian Christian arrested in Cairo for handing out gospel leaflets and held in prison illegally for four days has been released, the freed Protestant Copt told Compass.

Compass Direct - Islamic militants in Somalia this week killed a woman who led an underground Christian movement in the war-torn country.

AINA - A Saudi lawyer says a female journalist has been sentenced to 60 lashes for her involvement in a TV show in which a Saudi man publicly talked about sex. Rozanna al-Yami is believed to be the first Saudi woman journalist to be given such a punishment.

AINA - Muslims students stoned Coptic Christian churches and homes in a southern Egyptian village on Saturday after four Muslims suspected of killing a Copt were kept in custody, police said. The unrest began when the prosecutor extended the detention of the Muslims in the village of Dairut who are suspected of killing an elderly Copt in his home last week, a police official said.

Point the next leftist buffoon insisting that Islam is a religion of peace and all cultures are equal to these examples. Most likely it'll bounce right off their thick skull, but you never know, it might give them reason to stop and think.

Proponents of renewable energies often regard the requirement for more workers to produce a given amount of energy as a benefit, failing to recognize that this lowers the output potential of the economy and is hence counterproductive to net job creation. Significant research shows that initial employment benefits from renewable policies soon turn negative as additional costs are incurred. Trade- and other assumptions in those studies claiming positive employment turn out to be unsupportable.

In the end, Germany’s PV [photovoltaic] promotion has become a subsidization regime that, on a per-worker basis, has reached a level that far exceeds average wages, with per-worker subsidies as high as 175,000 Euros (US $ 240,000).

Due to their backup energy requirements, it turns out that any increased energy security possibly afforded by installing large PV and wind capacity is undermined by reliance on fuel sources -- principally gas that must be imported to meet domestic demand. That much of this gas is imported from unreliable suppliers calls energy security claims further into question.

Although Germany’s promotion of renewable energies is commonly portrayed in the media as setting a “shining example in providing a harvest for the world” (The Guardian 2007), we would instead regard [Germany’s] experience as a cautionary tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic and environmental benefits.

A woman came in last night looking for a book by some feminist author that I had never heard of before, no big surprise there. So, I look it up in our search engine and the computer says that we might have it in the store. MIGHT have it, not WILL. So I tell her that I can check our inventory and see if it’s there and show her the section it would be in.

Ten minutes later, as I’m showing another customer to 1984 I run across her in Literature looking around and she barges in to the conversation I’m having with my customer and sneers “Where is the section on Women’s rights?” I tell her again “It’s upstairs and I’ll be happy to take you to it as soon as I am done here.”

“No, I can fine it myself.” Note the lack of a ‘thank you’.

Sooo, as you can probably guess, I end up helping another customer find the Christianity section, which is upstairs, and as we get to the top of the escalator that same woman is standing in the middle of Independent Readers YELLING “Is there SOMEONE ACTUALLY WORKING here who can HELP ME!!!!”

Once again (because we were slammed with customers) I offer to show her the section and she is bitching the whole way about how the women’s studies section should be near the front of the store because it’s so important and how this author’s book should be on display because she’s doing a signing tour in California right now and she’s a NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNIST!!

Well, we get there and we have no copies. She flips her sh*t over it and repeats how wonderful this writer is and how we should all be required to read her crap and then says “Why don’t you have 900 copies here?!?! You have plenty of room! Her book should be displayed all over the store to inspire women everywhere about what they can do!”

I had to. I know it was wrong but what can you do when the set up is that perfect? “Well, ma’am, we were going to but we’re saving that spot for Sarah Palin.”

FOX News - President Obama is "leaning toward not going" to the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December, a senior administration official told Fox News. The current thinking in the administration is that since the conference is not a "head of state" event, Obama will not attend. Obama will be accepting the Nobel Prize in Oslo on the second day of the Copenhagen conference and may use that platform to address climate change issues.

Oh dear, somebody tell kevvie his man-friend just gave his much-lauded wank-fest in Europe the flick. And here kevvie was caterwauling and carrying on like a young teenie-bopper at her first rock concert about the end is nigh, how he's going to lead the way, lead it all the way to Copenhagen to save the planet. Turns out, Copenhagen is a just a gathering of tossers that even el-presidente of America can't be bothered attending.

I wonder if kevvie will weasel out of this now and issue his standard bullshit 'I make no apologies', even though no one asked the liar for one. Either that or kevvie will have to try and catch bazza in the toilets or run out the back after his presidential detail for a photo-op or something. Sorry kevvie, but barry hussein is way out of your league now, you been blowing air out of your arse about leading the way and all that for a while now but you just don't have the same mojo chump. Couple of days in office and the ass-polishers gave him the nobel prize, just like that! I know, struth, fair suck of the sauce bottle! But that's the way it is kevvie.

News.com.au - THOUSANDS of climate change activists have rallied at the Sydney Opera House and other iconic Australian locations to kick off a worldwide day of action billed as the largest ever. ......Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said Australia was the first country to send a message to world leaders to take bold action on global warming when they meet in Copenhagen in December. "The time for talk is passed," Ms Moore told the Opera House rally.

Yes, yes, we know, the end is nigh, something must be done now, the end, the effing end is effing nigh, they shriek. These useless leftist parasites have been shrieking this for years and years now. Well, will ya effing hurry up and get on with the bloody end, they keep telling us that it's all going to vaporize if we don't drive our [not theirs] wretched cars into the sea and throw the flushing toilet after them. But we haven't and the planet still hasn't gone up in smoke. Oh and the only message we are sending to the world is that we're the only bunch of morons jumping to sign something, anything to tax ourselves for absolutely bugger-all. Sort of like hiring an expensive hit-man to help you shoot yourself in the ass.

"Real commitment to change must be made if we are to avoid devastation." "Already we know that this building, our Opera House, for decades a symbol of optimism and the human spirit, is under threat from global warming."

Well that's a first, so according to this moron the Opera house is going to vaporize(?), usually these morons come up with victims that are at least a bit plausible for their hysterical cause; the polar bears, some rat in northern Russia, hurricane, earth quake etc. Never heard of an actual building being in danger from a 1 degree change in temperature. Go on clover, tell us how the famous harbor bridge is going to fall into harbor if that bastard carbon isn't annihilated. For goodness sake, even the BBC is saying the wretched planet has been COOLING!

BBC - ......For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

Did ya get that ya freaking morons, it's frigging COOLING, not warming, COOLING morons! Oh and just so you leftist morons are clear, you schmucks are free to throw out your flushing toilets, clothes dryers, cars and turn to subsistence farming out in the bush to save the planet, no one stopping you. You can even start up your own taxing schemes and all that to buy carbon offsets. The rest of us have no problem with that, we just don't want to be forced to pay for your cultish beliefs because you neanderthals are too stupid to figure out the facts.

But they get extremely lenient sentences for their outrageous and explicitly racist crimes

A gang of racist youths nearly killed a man during an armed rampage in an Indian grocery store in Melbourne's west for the "sheer thrill" of the attack, a judge said today. Drunk and carrying wooden planks ripped up from a nearby bus stop seat, the seven youths raided the Impex shop in Sunshine yelling "are you Indian?" as they randomly struck their victims on December 1 last year, the County Court heard today.

Indian student Sukhraj Singh, 28, was in a coma for 15 days and will suffer the effects of a severe acquired brain injury for the rest of his life after being beaten during the assault. Eight men were punched and hit with the weapons and most suffered minor injuries but Mr Singh was beaten unconscious and spent months in hospital and rehabilitation after being struck three times to the head and body.

In sentencing one of the attackers, Zakarie Hussein, 21, of Braybrook, Judge Pamela Jenkins said today the group had deliberately targeted victims of Indian ethnicity in the "unprovoked rampage". The youths had been drinking beer in a park for about four hours before they went to the store in City Place just after 6.30pm where two of the teens began a racist argument with two customers, the court heard.

About five minutes later, the pair returned with their friends, most armed with wooden bars and one with a fluorescent light tube, and began smashing up the store and indiscriminately striking customers and staff as they yelled "are you Indian?" and "bloody Indians, f--- off". The shop's cash register was stolen and the loot divided up among the offenders. Hussein received about $15.

In a victim impact statement tendered to the court, Mr Singh said metal plates had been inserted into his face, he had shed up to 15 kilograms and been left with lumps and scars on his head from the assault. "I am lucky to be alive, all my friends and family thought I was going to die," Mr Singh said in the statement. He said he suffered from dizzy spells and had undergone counselling after being plagued by nightmares and flashbacks. The court heard his injuries had been potentially life-threatening and meant he had been unable to work for five months, may not be able to complete his studies and was too frightened to live alone.

Hussein had pleaded guilty to armed robbery, recklessly causing serious injury, and six counts of recklessly causing injury. Judge Jenkins said Hussein had not used his wooden weapon but had planned to before being knocked out of the way by a co-offender.

She said the victims had tried to cower from their attackers and had done nothing to provoke the attack. "Your victims presented no threat to you or your co-offenders whatsoever. They did not provoke you, they did not fight back and indeed they made every effort to escape from the assaults," she said. "Notwithstanding these circumstances the victims were beaten apparently for the sheer thrill, Mr Singh being subjected to a particularly savage beating with the terrible consequences for him."

Judge Jenkins said the assault was among a number of racist attacks that had rightly provoked international and local community outrage and should be condemned. "Short of becoming prisoners in their own homes, there is little potential victims can do to prevent such attacks," she said.

Judge Jenkins sentenced Hussein to four-and-a-half years' jail with a minimum non-parole period of two years. Hussein, dressed in a black suit and white shirt and supported in court by family, bit his nails throughout the hearing and stood with his hands clasped while he was sentenced to serve his time in an adult prison. The court heard he had migrated to Australia from Somalia, aged about six, with his older brother and mother, who were both later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. [Africans do have an unusually high incidence of psychotic illness and the psychoses do have a strong hereditary component]

Four of Hussein's co-offenders, aged between 14 and 17 at the time of the attack, had already received 12-month sentences in a youth detention centre and a fifth teen received a 12-month youth supervision order. The Director of Public Prosecutions Jeremy Rapke has appealed against the sentences, arguing they are "manifestly inadequate". The Court of Appeal is yet to hand down its judgment. A sixth offender, who has pleaded guilty in the Children's Court, will be sentenced following the result of the appeal.

Audrey ought to go home and mind her kids, if she's got any. I am an unrelenting critic of police thuggery but the cop in this case behaved entirely reasonably. What was the cop supposed to do? Ignore the nut? This is at best totally misguided sympathy for the mentally ill. A person behaving in an extremely dangerous way has to be stopped, mad or not. The cop is not in a position to put someone on a couch for half an hour before he decides how to repond to his behaviour

A VICTORIAN policeman is facing the prospect of criminal charges over a fatal shooting after a coronial investigation into the death of a man brandishing two samurai-style swords referred the case to the Director of Public Prosecutions. State Coroner Audrey Jamieson yesterday found Sergeant Samuel Cahir failed to take an appropriate level of care for his own health and safety, or that of his junior officer, when he approached and shot dead Gregory Biggs on Melbourne's Lygon Street in May 2004. She described the death of 27-year-old Biggs as "a poignant example of the tragic consequences when the police rely too heavily on bravado and spontaneity at the expense of policy".

Sergeant Cahir was driving with Senior Constable John Hawkins down Lygon Street, a popular restaurant and tourist strip just north of the CBD, when they saw Biggs wielding two samurai-like swords and damaging property. While Senior Constable Hawkins turned the car around, Sergeant Cahir jumped out of the passenger side and approached Biggs alone. Drawing his gun, Sergeant Cahir said: "Police, don't move. Drop the weapon."

Biggs, under the influence of a cocktail of drugs at the time, continued to advance, swinging his swords and smashing the rear window of the police car. Fearing for his safety, Sergeant Cahir discharged one shot into the man's torso.

Ms Jamieson concluded Biggs's death was preventable [How?] and that Sergeant Cahir may have committed an indictable offence under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The Coroner's comments follow a scathing Office of Police Integrity report handed down in July on the use of force by Victoria Police.

Deputy Police Commissioner Kieran Walshe said the finding, to his knowledge, was unprecedented. "This is the first time that I am aware of that a coroner has had a finding such as this but again, we have to await the outcome of the DPP," he said.

The Coroner said the investigation into Biggs's death "raised issues regarding Victoria Police training and communication techniques, including dealing with people with mental illness, people (who are) drug-affected and the use of firearms." She said Victoria Police should review the amount of time given to officers so they could complete operational strategy and tactics training. Referring to the two officers involved in the shooting, Ms Jamieson said, "Their training appears to have played such a small part in their actions ... "The actions of Sergeant Cahir are difficult to reconcile with the fact that he had been a fully operational officer for some 13 years."

OPI director Michael Strong earlier this year recommended giving frontline officers "alternatives to a hands-on approach that is heavily reliant on tactical equipment such as capsicum spray or firearms". "Training must refocus ... on equipping police with the necessary skills to accurately assess situations and identify individuals who may have a mental health problem or are under the influence of alcohol and drugs," the OPI report found.

Police Association boss Greg Davies said the Coroner's findings sent a message to serving police members that, "they are damned if they do and they are damned if theydon't. "I think the use of the term bravado is a very unfortunate term. I think it is very easy, five years down the track in the clear light of day, to judge something as an act of bravado," Mr Davies said. He said the death of Biggs makes a compelling argument for the rollout of Taser stun guns for frontline police.

Daily Mail - He was fighting a secret and brutal war in a dusty land far from home. But while the 1972 clash between British forces and Communist rebels in Oman has long passed into history, the actions of Sergeant Talaiasi Labalaba have not. Instead, the Fijian soldier's exemplary courage under fire places him high on the pantheon of SAS heroes. ......The sergeant and his nine-strong SAS unit were part of a clandestine mission to protect the Sultan of Oman from the People's Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arab Gulf. By July 1972, they had been in the country for a year and the assignment - codenamed Operation Jaguar - appeared to be going well.

But then the rebels stuck back. On the morning of July 19, around 250 elite fighters stormed MIrbat, a small town on the Arabian sea, leaving the SAS pinned down inside a fort. As his comrades fought an increasingly desperate battle to hold off 250 insurgents, it dawned on Labalaba, 30, that they were about to be overrun. With no cover and facing certain death, he sprinted across 800 metres of exposed ground to reach a 25-pound field-gun. It was a brave - but apparently futile manouevre - as the huge weapon took three men to operate. That, however, did not deter Labalaba.

Nor did facial injuries which would have rendered a lesser man helpless. As British forces watched in astonishment, Labalaba turned the cumbersome gun on the enemy and opened fire at near point blank range. He went on for six hours, decimating the rebels and ultimately paying for his courage with his life. His comrades found him slumped face down by the massive gun. His selfless actions undoubtedly saved many of the British soldiers holed up inside the fort and won him a posthumous Mention in Despatches.

Just for today, I am departing from my usual format to present a small miscellany that I think might interest readers here.

1). For a start, I think that POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH is a must-read today for the coverage borrowed from a BRITISH newspaper of the subhuman black-on-white crimes in Tennessee that American newspapers have tried to ignore. The British report went up on 16th but there still seems to have been nothing like it in the U.S. mainstream media.

2). Retirees and Vets Allowed to Salute Flag

We read:

"Traditionally, members of the nation’s veterans service organizations have rendered the hand-salute during the national anthem and at events involving the national flag only while wearing their organization’s official head-gear.The National Defense Authorization Act of 2008 contained an amendment to allow un-uniformed servicemembers, military retirees, and veterans to render a hand salute during the hoisting, lowering, or passing of the U.S. flag. A later amendment further authorized hand-salutes during the national anthem by veterans and out-of-uniform military personnel. This was included in the Defense Authorization Act of 2009, which President Bush signed on Oct. 14, 2008.

Maybe I am just an old fogey but I am an ex-Army man so maybe I have a right to be bit grumpy about this. I think it is a decay of standards. One has to have approved headgear on to salute whilst in the army and I see no clear reason why that should be relaxed elsewhere. What is wrong with a hand on heart for unhatted civilians in such situations?

3). Silvio prefers to party

The King of political incorrectness again:

"Silvio Berlusconi was accused of spurning a chance to help the Middle East peace process last night after apparently snubbing the King of Jordan in favour of a party with his old friend Vladimir Putin.

Opposition politicians in Rome demanded to know why the Prime Minister had cancelled a meeting with King Abdullah, choosing instead to fly to St Petersburg to discuss energy projects between Russia and the EU — and, it was alleged, to attend a private party in honour of Mr Putin’s 57th birthday on October 7. La Repubblica newspaper reported that Mr Berlusconi would “carry fine wines” as a gift for Mr Putin.

* Respect (as in, "respects the rights of the Israelis and Palestinians" or "the Iranians and North Koreans") — overrun (Israelis) or elevate beyond reason with no expectation of reciprocity (everyone else).

* Responsibility (as in the "responsibility" to buy health insurance or America's "responsibility" to confront global warming) — big government telling people or nations things they have to do. (See "Action" above.)

* Scare tactics — see "Misinformation" above.

* Security (as in "stability and security" in health care or "true security for all Israelis") — you're toast.

About

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists. The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Some brief observations about Leftism

As a good academic, I first define my terms: A Leftist is a person who is so dissatisfied with the way things naturally are that he/she is prepared to use force to make people behave in ways that they otherwise would not.

Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal

Leftism is fundamentally authoritarian. Whether by revolution or by legislation, Leftists aim to change what people can and must do. When in 2008 Obama said that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography but rather about American people. He wanted them to stop doing things that they wanted to do and make them do things that they did not want to do. Can you get a better definition of authoritarianism than that?

And note that an American President is elected to administer the law, not make it. That seems to have escaped Mr Obama

That Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian is not a new insight. It was well understood by none other than Friedrich Engels (Yes. THAT Engels). His excellent short essay On authority was written as a reproof to the dreamy Anarchist Left of his day. It concludes: "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means"

Evan Sayet: The Left sides "...invariably with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success." (t=5:35+ on video)

Some useful definitions:

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed. If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone. If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him. If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down. If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!) If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

Death taxes: You would expect a conscientious person, of whatever degree of intelligence, to reflect on the strange contradiction involved in denying people the right to unearned wealth, while supporting programs that give people unearned wealth.

America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course

Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left

The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left.

Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.

The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.

Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.

The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here

The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.

Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)

I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful

The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel

"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises

Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses

Among people who should know better, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

“Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics.” -- C.J. Keyser

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU

"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.

Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.

Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance

Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state – capitalism frees them.

MESSAGE to Leftists: Even if you killed all conservatives tomorrow, you would just end up in another Soviet Union. Conservatives are all that stand between you and that dismal fate.

Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

"With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society" -- Ann Coulter

Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable

A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931–2005: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in a MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

You can email me (John Ray) here (Hotmail address). In emailing me, you can address me as "John", "Jon", "Dr. Ray" or "JR" and that will be fine -- but my preference is for "JR"

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)